Obama to Betray Everyone Immediately

Steve Clemons and other sources are reporting that Sen. Hillary Clinton may have the inside track for Secretary of State. How is this not an insult to most of Barack Obama’s supporters? Even to Hillary herself?

Barack Obama won the nomination precisely because of he touted his superior judgment on the Iraq War.

“They should ask themselves: Who got the single most important foreign policy decision since the end of the Cold War right, and who got it wrong?”

And now, Obama –hope of antiwar liberals and many Obamacons– may appoint someone “who got it wrong” for Secretary of State.

Also, for all his promises to change the way Washington works, he picked as his Chief of Staff someone who knows how to make Washington profitable. Tim Carney has a great column in today’s Washington Examiner taking a look at Rahm Emanuel’s record of enriching himself with his contacts in the defense-industry.

I’m sure we’ll be told that these appointments “represent Obama’s desire for reconciliation.”

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11 Responses to Obama to Betray Everyone Immediately

This cheapens legitimate criticism of Obama (whom I did not vote for just to be clear.)

First of all, Obama will be these peoples’ boss. Obama gives the policy order, these people execute it. Plain and simple. If they don’t, they get fired. They have no independent judgment, they have no independent will. You may despise Obama’s policies (I do!), but his hirelings won’t be in a position to make policy.

Secondly, regarding Clinton specifically; if you were actually interested in “Change You Can Believe In”, you’d rather have her in the executive branch taking orders from Obama than her in the Senate mucking things up for him. This takes Clinton’s independent power away, so it is good if you want Obama to do things. If I were an Obama supporter, I’d rather have Clinton safely subordinate than cranky and independent.

Finally, Obama can’t very well appoint himself to all positions. That means not all of his appointments will have the exact governing philosophy he does, and that unless he appoints a cabinet full of outsiders, some of them will have a passing knowledge of how Washington works for better and worse. To get the vapors over appointments of cabinet-level SUBORDINATES, people who will be receiving face-to-face instruction from the President, is ridiculous.

Far more troubling to me is the way in which so many liberal bloggers, particularly anti-war liberals, are outright excited by this rumor as either brilliant politics or, worse, as a brilliant choice. Just one more notch in my long-standing theory that political parties and leaders affect constituent interest groups and ideologies far more than the interest groups and ideologies affect political parties.

Is this good or bad? Hillary is no longer in the senate… ok. She’s not in a position like Secretary of Defense and he hasn’t nominated her to be a Supreme Court Justice (yet). I did not want her to be president but at the same time I think she’s a competent and intelligent person that could be reasonably suited for Secretary of State. Who are the other options, realistically? John Kerry? Keep Condoleezza Rice? Bill Richardson is the other name that floats around a lot and has floated around for a while.

I think there is some truth to how Obama will be able to manage his cabinet will define how successful they are. The thing is, Hillary still is not president and probably never will be, thankfully… but at this point I actually think that I have more hope that she will be an effective Secretary of State than I think Obama will be an effective President. The recoil factor for me is thinking of all the nutty Hillary fans getting all jubilant over her getting a cabinet position.

Now, the biggest question is will David Paterson replace Hillary in the Senate with Eliot Spitzer? Whatever happened to George Pataki? Why is he such a nobody these days? You figure if McCain coulda run so could Pataki.

Seriously, though; all I meant was that if you *liked* Obama for his judgment on the war, you don’t have to worry that people working under him don’t have as good of judgment. Obama gets to be “The Decider” and the cabinet serves at his pleasure.

If you *don’t like* Obama’s judgment (“I guess the question is who is Obama’s boss”), well, there’s isn’t much to be done at the moment except filibuster everything in the Senate. The premise of the original post, though, was gasping “shouldn’t Obama SUPPORTERS feel betrayed?” Answer: no, and anti-war paleo-conservatives would do well to hold our fire for when Obama *actually* makes a crappy, alienating move so we can seize the reactionary moment.

young geezer…I don’t think Obama is the ‘decider’ on any rel event issue. I don’t think the cabinet reflects his judgment but those in power who put obama in office. I think Obama is actually more dangerous than McCain would have been since he will be advancing the Israel first interventionalist policy with no liberal opposition -after all who wants to attack the first black president? that’s racist. ironic, or perhaps not, as the criticism of israel=antisemitism is losing its luster, Obama has stepped up to the plate to protect our foreign policy from any serious scrutiny. Perhaps it will be like the mortgage crisis, denial denial, denial, until the day it comes crashing down.

dr. wu: patiki -the field of fiscally irresponsible liberal republicans is a bit crowded right now…

Well have to hold judgement on this one until it actually materializes. Obama will come out smelling like a rose no matter what happens. He has his friends in the MSM to ensure it.http://rightklik.blogspot.com/

This looks very smart to me. First off, we have no idea whether Hillary was for or against the war… what we know is her vote which was a political calculation, albeit a wrong one. We also know she missed her real chance in 2004, as did McCain his in 2000.

Getting her out of the Senate and into the Cabinet is a smart political tactic. Making her SecState is a reasonable job she is qualified to do, and you get two for one here, but in a way that is unthreatening. It sets up using Bill in geographies where he’s effective, and Bills’ link to Bush 41 enables a fairly bipartisan feel to it all.

The real policy question is how smart Obama will be in reversing the interventionist consensus; how much his talk during the campaigns was what he absolutely had to say to get elected and how much was actual continuation of the disastrous policies of the meddlers. We will find out soon enough. But given his incredibly low gaffe rate (at most two mistakes in two years) I find it likely that it was utter calculation, and that a combination of diplomatic successes and budgetary limitations will lead to a far less interventionist foreign policy. At least that’s what I… hope.

Whether it’s Hilary or no, Dennis Ross is already committing Obama to carrying on the Clinton’s failed ME policy–as seen Ross’s denial that Obama supports the Arab peace initiative. (An initiative supported by among others, Lee Hamilton, Brent Scowcroft, Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres as the proper basis for negotiations with the Palestinians.) Obama needs to ditch Ross and the rest of “Israel’s lawyers” before he’s set up to fail like Clinton did. (Can anyone really believe Ross, et al., will be loyal to Obama first? And is it really enough to say Obama can fire them all? What damage would be done to his foreign policy if he has to fire these “advisers”?)